On August 6, 2017, at the 17th World Congress of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem, the first plenary session celebrated “70 Years of Discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls”. The four papers look at various ways in which the Dead Sea Scrolls enhance our knowledge of early Jewish literature.

Emeritus Professor John W. Rogerson (1935-2018) delivered the Beauchief Abbey Lectures 2017 on “Poet Prophets of the Old Testament” in 2017.

John Rogerson explains why far more attention should be paid to the poetic side of the Old Testament prophets, and to the implications of their poetic language for understanding God and for talking about God. Poets and poetry are needed, he says, not only in our everyday lives; we need them in our worship, in our theology, in our services, because without poetry these will become impoverished.

Lecture 1: The Rediscovery of Hebrew Poetry in the 18th Century

Lecture 2: The Poet Prophets of the Old Testament

Lecture 3: The Forms of Old Testament Prophecy

Lecture 4: The Servant Songs of Isaiah 42-53

Lecture 5: What do the Poet Prophets of the Old Testament have to say to us today?

On April 5, 2018, Professor David M. Carr (Union Theological Seminary) delivered the final lecture in the 2017-18 Killeen Chair of Theology and Philosophy lecture series, at St. Norbert College.

David M. Carr, Ph.D., professor of Old Testament at Union Theological Seminary, invites us to consider the transformative possibilities in the story of God’s creation of male and female humans in the Garden of Eden in Genesis 2-3. Carr’s lecture will offer a new reading of Genesis 2-3 as a subtle account of what it means to be a fully adult human, neither all good nor all bad.

On May 25, 2018, The Centre for the Social-Scientific Study of the Bible at St Mary’s University, Twickenham held a one-day seminar, “Social-Scientific Criticism and Christian Origins: Past, Present and Future”.

‘Social-Scientific Criticism’ now serves in New Testament studies as an umbrella term for a variety of critical approaches to early Christianity, which include cultural anthropology, social identity theory, social history, ancient and modern media studies, memory theories, human geography, ancient and modern politics, race theory, trauma studies, and others. This conference gathers leading scholars to answer that question and track the progress of the scholarly discourse from initial applications to the current state of the discussion, as well as offer thoughts about the future.

The deepening fractures in North America around a host of issues trouble many people, within and beyond traditional religious institutions. Words like “we” and “they” dot the landscape of Paul’s letter to the Romans, but students of the letter seldom reflect on the work they do. This talk will reflect on that language in Romans and show how Paul’s most famous letter may be surprisingly helpful in our polarized context.

Professor Gerald West (University of KwaZulu-Natal) presented the 2018 De Carle Lecture Series on the topic, “The Bible as a Site of Struggle”.

“The Bible as a site of struggle” allows me to bring my biblical scholarship work and my community-based activist work together. The Ujamaa Centre for Community Development and Research, established in the late 1980s as part of the struggle against apartheid, is the site of much of my work, intersecting the academy and the community. After nearly thirty years of work with the Ujamaa Centre I have recognised more clearly what it is that our work with the Bible offers to local communities of the poor and marginalised. Central to what we offer is a participatory praxis in which we work with the Bible as ‘a site of struggle’ – of multiple, often contending ideo-theological voices. Working with a Bible that is ‘a site of struggle’ offers forms of interpretive resilience to poor and marginalised communities who are often stigmatised and victimised by dominant monovocal appropriations of the Bible. In this lecture series I will reflect on both the academic and community dimensions of this work.

Wednesday 28 February – ‘Site of struggle’ in South African Liberation Theologies

Wednesday 07 March – The Bible as a Site of Struggle in South African Black Theology

Wednesday 14 March – Recovering a Co-opted Bible in Post-apartheid South Africa

Wednesday 21 March – Working with the Bible as a Site of Struggle in Local Communities

Professor Sidnie White Crawford (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) summarises the latest scholarship on the Qumran library of 800-900 fragmentary manuscripts from the mid-third century BCE to the late first century CE, and the history of the sect responsible for the collection and its scribal/learned characteristics. Her public lecture was delivered on January 25, 2018, on the occasion of receiving a D.Theol honoris causa from the University of Uppsala.

Professor James Crossley (St Mary’s University) presents a paper drawn from his book, Cults, Martyrs and Good Samaritans: Religion in Contemporary English Political Discourse (Pluto Press, July 2018). The paper was presented at the CSSSB conference, Christian Origins and Social-Scientific Criticism, on May 25, 2018 (Crossley appears at 2:50) There were two responses to his paper, from Dr Hannah M. Strømmen (University of Chichester) and Professor Yvonne Sherwood (University of Kent), not included in the video.

Dr Simon Gathercole (Cambridge University) delivered the third Lagrange Lecture at the École biblique et archéologique française de Jérusalem, on May 2, 2018, entitled “The Death and Resurrection of Jesus in the Gospel of Peter”.

Gathercole examines how the Gospel of Peter takes the traditions in the canonical gospels, and rearranges them, in part in order to blame “the Jews”.

On February 21, 2018, Professor emeritus Yair Zakovitch (Hebrew University) delivered the first 2018 Lagrange lecture at the École biblique et archéologique française de Jérusalem, entitled “On Love and Beauty: The Complex Relations between the Song of Songs and Biblical Narrative.”

For decades it has been customary—indeed nearly academic dogma—to isolate the literary traditions of the Song from wider biblical traditions, especially prophetic literature and the scriptural narratives recounting Israel’s story. Recently, however, some scholars have begun to press arguments for recognizing inter-biblical allusions in the Song, working to re-integrate this unique specimen of biblical love-poetry within a broader biblical thought-world. The presentation of Prof. Zakovitch belongs within this budding debate and provided a sneak preview of material that will soon appear in his forthcoming study: The Song of Songs: Riddle of Riddles (T&T Clark, September 2018).

Taylor Weaver (University of Kent) presents his talk on Class Struggle and Early Christianity, delivered to the Religious Studies department at the University of Kent, February 2018. The talk is available on YouTube, in two parts:

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